Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind

by Mallory Factor

  That’s right where AFT president Randi Weingarten stopped her. Weingarten, who is militant in proclaiming that what’s best for the unions must be best for kids, says that seniority is “the best mechanism we have. You have cronyism and corruption and discrimination issues… We don’t want to see people getting laid off based on how much they cost.”54 But, of course, cronyism is the name of the game for the teachers unions—and teachers should be laid off if they are not producing enough value for their cost.

  Weingarten, whom Newsweek called “well dressed and well educated” and who herself makes $425,000 a year as a union official, criticized Rhee as someone who “does not view teaching as a career… She sees it as temporary, something a lot of newbies will work very hard at for a couple of years, and then if they leave, they leave, as opposed to professionals who get more seasoned.”55 And faced the possibility of real tenure reform, Weingarten and the Washington Teachers Union president took the green-tier/red-tier proposal right off the table and didn’t put the proposal to a vote of their members. The ultimate agreement between Rhee and the unions left teacher tenure basically intact, while “weakening seniority and job security” somewhat and providing much more modest teacher raises than Rhee’s original green tier would have provided.56

  Reform does not come easy in school systems controlled by the teachers unions. In addition to resisting changes to teacher tenure, the teachers unions fight pretty much any form of school choice, including voucher programs and charter schools which would implicitly allow parents to judge the quality of their teachers and schools. The teachers unions oppose these programs essentially because they allow students to escape from unionized public schools, reducing the number of unionized teachers needed and the amount of teachers union dues generated.57

  Teachers unions often seem to want to take all choice away from parents over their children’s education. In fact, it sometimes seems that teachers unions officials think they’re our parents, and we children don’t know what’s good for us. When Louisiana’s Republican governor Bobby Jindal talked about the possibility of vouchers which would allow parents greater choice over where to send their kids to school (and would partially subsidize private and parochial school tuition), a Louisiana teachers union official dismissed the idea. The union official said, “If I’m a parent in poverty I have no clue because I’m trying to struggle and live day to day.” The implication seemed to be that poor parents can’t make meaningful decisions about their kids. Jindal responded, “To me that is incredibly offensive and exactly what is wrong with the top down approach.” And as one mother of three children stated, “Nobody knows my child better than me. I can’t imagine not having a choice.”58

  Teachers unions are well aware that making the fight over the future of our children allows them to claim the high road, but this is a public relations and bargaining tactic. A Michigan teachers union bargaining manual makes this point perfectly clear. The manual instructs its members to phrase their demands in terms of the children, stating, “In terms of a bargaining message, the public responds most positively when we talk about children, quality in the classroom and the future.”59 The manual suggests that the right type of slogan might be, “It’s not about dollars and cents; it’s about our children.”60 If only it were actually about our children!

  Indoctrination

  It’s not just that bad educational policy drives out the most worthy teachers who can be paid more elsewhere. It’s not even that math and science teachers make the same kind of money as teachers of ceramic arts. Or that young “teachers of the year” get fired before tenured rule breakers sitting in rubber rooms. It’s that teachers unions are exercising considerable influence over what our students are taught.61

  If the unions are focused on their own growth, we’d expect their curriculum choices to teach the benefits of bigger government and more education spending. And we’d expect the unions to stick their noses in every liberal issue across the spectrum. And lo and behold, that’s exactly what happens.

  The famed economist Ludwig Von Mises pointed out that in Germany, the university system was controlled by the government, and as a result university professors taught appreciation for big government. In America, we should not be surprised that our Shadowbosses are actually training a new generation of activists dedicated to the union cause right in our nation’s public schools. Now, in addition to having your kids bug you to recycle, reduce your carbon footprint, fight global warming, and buy a hybrid car, you can expect that Junior will regale you with bits of union history and will try to convince you that joining together in solidarity with other workers is the noblest expression of a free people.

  The teachers unions realize that the best way to build young unionists is to start early—in kindergarten, if possible. The unions have actually pushed a children’s book called Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type. The book tells the story of a bunch of cows who go on strike. Unlike in real life, they aren’t just shipped off to the stockyards for slaughter. The cows use collective action to win the day. And lest you think that the teachers union officials were just drawn to the colorful illustrations and amusing story: “One lesson plan… calls for students to read the book and learn four new vocabulary words: union, strike, laborer and negotiate,” noticed one commentator.62

  In another case, teachers at a teachers union conference were encouraged to have their kindergarteners put on a puppet show called Trouble in the Hen House, a union propaganda play put out by the California Federation of Teachers, a union affiliated with the AFT.63 The story is about barnyard animals that fight unfair working conditions and is designed to teach the kids “about the strength and value of organizing unions.” In the play, Daisy the cow hammers the point home to the chickens about the importance of organizing themselves into a union: “We’re a group of working cows. We’re strong because we all stick together and help each other. We decide what we need and we pick leaders to go talk to Farmer Brown, but he knows we stand behind our leaders. Now he gives us better hay, and we’re not always so tired from having to give him so much milk.” The teachers union materials explain that “Students can make puppets and learn about the potential for power in collective action” and that the play could be perfect for celebrating Cesar Chavez Day.64 Other materials suggested for small children by the California Federation of Teachers include Along the Shore, a coloring book focusing on longshoremen, and “simply but effectively showing the importance of unions in workers’ lives”; and Autoworks, a comic book history of the United Auto Workers.65

  Partisan teaching is a huge action item for the teachers unions. A teachers guide for teaching globalism explains, “Partisan teaching… invites diversity of opinion but does not lose sight of the aim of the curriculum: to alert students to global injustice, to seek explanations, and to encourage activism.”66 Meanwhile, the NEA has opposed David Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights, which would ensure that people of differing political views be allowed to teach on campuses.67 Political diversity is not a type of diversity permitted by teachers unions in our schools.

  Most of all, teachers unions want teachers to teach support for the union movement. In a model for all our states, Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle, the Democrat who served before current Republican governor Scott Walker, signed a bill requiring “labor history and collective bargaining” be taught in Wisconsin public schools. According to the Wisconsin Labor History Society, that bill’s sponsors were interested in “returning balance to our school curricula by providing more teaching of labor in the schools.”68 Similarly, a California teachers union has a Labor in the Schools Committee dedicated to “educating K–12 students about the role and contributions of unions and the labor movement to American society.”69

  Late Socialist and leftist historian Howard Zinn was a huge proponent of just this sort of indoctrination of schoolchildren. “If teacher unions want to be strong and well-supported,” he wrote, “it’s essential that they not only be teacher-unionists but teachers of un
ionism. We need to create a generation of students who support teachers and the movement of teachers for their rights.”70 What a great self-serving idea—and the teachers unions have taken it to heart. As a labor organizer in Chicago says, “Some teachers don’t want to talk to their students about unions; they see it as somehow unethical and misusing their position. That’s ridiculous. Teachers need to help sow the seeds of the future of unionism.”71

  The NEA is heavily promoting activism in the early grades. In October 2011, teachers from an elementary school in Wisconsin received a $5,000 grant from the NEA to help them “develop a course of study with a team of colleagues to help first or second grade students understand the role of power in their lives, including how they can use technology and podcasts to create activist messages around issues important to the students.”72 Sounds like teaching school kids to be activists. But what happens when they want to strike for chocolate milk in the lunchroom and more recess? This school later returned the grant, but as progressivism takes a greater hold on our society, we can expect many schools to buy into new, well-funded teachers unions’ initiatives to build young activists and praise the activist’s mantra of “standing up to power.”

  Of course all that education about the labor movement and political indoctrination leaves little time for old-fashioned reading, writing, and arithmetic. Phyllis Schlafly explains: “Elementary and secondary school education used to be organized around subjects such as reading, math, history, geography, language, and science. While smatterings of those subjects are still taught, the focus has been shifted from academic subject matter to teaching attitudes, beliefs, values, themes, behaviors, and job skills. This is indoctrination, not education.”73 And it’s a misuse of our students’ valuable time and energy.

  Protesting: A Lesson Plan

  If you had any doubt about whether or not teachers unions consider students as tools in their hands, look no further than the recent protests over Governor Scott Walker’s decision to rein in collective bargaining over teachers in Wisconsin. The teachers unions didn’t just call rallies for the teachers; they encouraged teachers to bring their students with them. “High school students in Wisconsin have staged walk-outs in support of their teachers over the last two days, much to the delight of liberal sites such as The Nation and the blog of the AFL-CIO,” reported TheBlaze.74 Another report described a similar protest at another school, “Yesterday, more than half the student body of Madison East High School walked out with the support and assistance of their teachers.”75 The AFL-CIO cheered the move to give students their first taste of government employee union power. “The students have been so energized,” celebrated one union leader.76 Did the students enjoy the activism, or was it just a great excuse to miss school?

  Teacher and student protests prompted Sarah Palin to write a note to the protestors: “I greatly admire good teachers and will always speak up in defense of the teaching profession,” she wrote. “But Wisconsin teacher unions do themselves no favor by closing down classrooms and abandoning children’s needs in protest against the sort of belt-tightening that people everywhere are going through.”77

  But, you say, that was just in Wisconsin, where battles over collective bargaining have reached a fever pitch. How could we possibly suggest that mobilizing students in favor of labor union causes is a common occurrence?

  Maybe because it happens all the time. In Los Angeles, teachers protested in May 2011 against cuts in education funding in California. And the Associated Press reported, “Students were seen leaving Panorama City High School [during school hours] and lining the streets with signs to protest the cuts to education. The teachers are holding signs saying ‘Keep Schools Open’ and ‘Education Can’t Wait.’ ”78 Well, apparently, education can wait while the teachers are protesting and bringing their students along with them. It has also happened recently in Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, and other states.

  Of course, when kids are not on school time, they have the right to go to protests. But protesting shouldn’t be a school-sanctioned activity unless schools are training young unionists, which is exactly what teachers unions are working to do.

  Rise of Online Education

  Right now, only a few trends in education have the potential to curb the enormous influence of teachers unions over our educational system. Perhaps the most promising of these trends is online education.

  Fortunately for Americans, and unfortunately for teachers unions, technology is changing everything. The rapid spread and obvious appeal of high-quality online schooling is so dramatic that even the well-organized teachers unions will not be able to hold it back—although, if we are not careful, they may be able to co-opt it and make it their own.

  Imagine a customized program of online education which allows every schoolchild to develop his or her strengths and work on his weaknesses—even in the evenings, weekends, and over school breaks. We are not talking about iPad apps here, but about high-quality online education programs increasingly available for K–12 students. Your child could attend live classes in school for a few hours a day, followed by several additional hours of customized online education in a study hall at school or at home. If your school doesn’t offer a subject that your child is interested in, he could sign up for a virtual class in that subject with a live teacher interacting with him and a group of other students across the state or nation via Skype. He could drill in areas in which he is weak, and use programs designed for his particular learning styles. And if you and your child want to, he could continue his customized learning program over the summer so he doesn’t slip back over the long school break.

  Many states are now offering virtual public school programs that are provided by private companies for a fraction of the cost of public education. Florida Virtual School Full Time is now available free to every Florida resident as a substitute for public schooling; already 122,000 have enrolled at least on a part-time basis. Florida’s online program employs 1,200 accredited, nonunion teachers, and it is available seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.79 Like most virtual schooling options, Florida Virtual School Full Time is much cheaper for the state to operate than a regular school—at least 30 percent cheaper per student. Many other states use national online companies like K–12, also staffed with nonunion teachers, to provide online schooling in their districts, again saving money for the state.

  Online education threatens teachers unions because the world of online schooling is “flat.” Content can be developed anywhere, offered freely or cheaply on the web. Live teacher support services via the Internet can be staffed by nonunion teachers, or even outsourced to teachers abroad, for that matter. The virtual world of online education has no bounds, no districts to keep children captive and subject to teachers union supervision. This makes online education very difficult to control, even by the crafty teachers unions.

  Innovative educational platforms like the online Khan Academy challenge the teachers unions’ control over K–12 education by promising to provide “a free world class education to anyone anywhere”—without public schools. It is a revolutionary idea, and one that millions of Americans are starting to embrace, at least as a supplement to school-based education.

  Teachers unions may be able to dismiss a private Internet company like the Khan Academy, but as America’s esteemed universities and top education companies join the revolution, there will be no stopping online education from toppling “school” as we know it. Johns Hopkins offers high-quality self-paced courses as enhancement or in substitution for school classes.80 MIT now offers extensive online courses for free, and will even be offering certificates to people who complete its programs and take certain testing for a small fee.81 Stanford and other top universities are already dipping their toes into this open access model.82

  Online education has the potential to benefit many students. Students and parents win because they have another educational option; taxpayers win because they get more for their educational dollars with online education. Te
achers win because online education gives them more employment opportunities. The only group that doesn’t win is teachers unions, who lose control over K–12 education.

  The biggest challenge for teachers unions is that online education, for the first time, puts education back in the hands of parents. Online education predicates itself on the notion that parents are in charge and able to choose a program for their own children. Brick and mortar schools, on the other hand, operate under the idea that parents hand their children over to a caretaker-teacher who is given full control to raise a child for the seven to eight hours that they are in school each day.

  The biggest challenge for teachers unions is that online education, for the first time, puts education back in the hands of parents. Online education predicates itself on the notion that parents are in charge and able to choose a program for their own children. Brick and mortar schools, on the other hand, operate under the idea that parents hand their children over to a caretaker-teacher who is given full control to raise a child for the seven to eight hours that they are in school each day.